Fish Health Inspectorate
The Fish Health Inspectorate (FHI) is dedicated to:
maintaining and improving fish and shellfish health in England and Wales.
FHI's primary role is to act for Defra and NAWAD in undertaking statutory and inspection duties resulting from the EU Fish Health regime and other national legislation in the area of fish and shellfish health. The Inspectorate also licenses and monitors imports of fish and shellfish from other countries and runs an enforcement programme aimed at preventing the illegal importation of these animals.
Great Britain has a long history of fish disease controls dating back to 1937 when the Fish Disease Act was established to control Furunculosis. Controls for this bacterial disease which was causing serious losses in wild salmonid populations at that time have since been extended to other serious diseases which have been added to the Notifiable Disease List. These controls prohibited the import of live salmonids and applied strict controls on other fish, ensuring that Great Britain remained free of many of the serious diseases of fish present in Europe and the rest of the world. Where outbreaks of these notifiable diseases occur in Great Britain the Act provides controls on movements of live fish to prevent further spread.
With the adoption of the single European market in 1992, in order to free up trade between Member States, including that in live fish, an EU Fish Health Regime was established to limit the spread of the most serious diseases across Europe. This was based on Council Directive 91/67 EEC and subsequent Directives and Decisions. It established rules on compulsory eradication for the most serious exotic diseases of fish (list I) such as Infectious Salmon Anaemia (ISA), and took into account that for other serious diseases the fish health status of aquaculture animals was not uniform across the EU. It introduced the concept of Approved Zones and Farms for other serious diseases (list II) such as Infectious Haematopoietic Necrosis (IHN) and Viral Haemorrhagic Septicaemia (VHS), for which treatment and vaccination was not available, and introductions to such Approved Zones and Farms were limited to fish stocks from sources of equivalent or higher health status. The regime also provides for national controls for certain other diseases (list III) such as Spring Viraemia of Carp (SVC), which are a serious problem in some Member States and for which treatment and vaccination are not available or possible. With EU agreement national programmes can then be established to contain or prevent the introduction of the disease. The FHI are charged with meeting the responsibilities in England and Wales emerging from the UK policies adopted under the EU regime.
